While I was searching our school's online archives, I came across this remarkable history I had not known about Ferry Hall:
Traditionally at Ferry Hall each graduate chose an underclass girl to escort her down the aisle. After its merger with the Academy in 1974, girls began choosing male or female escorts, usually a relative or a friend. By the 1990s, however, this practice was abandoned for it was thought antiquated that girls needed support coming down the aisle.
Today the graduating girls at the Academy process with confident independence in their lovely white dresses.
Saturday, July 10, 2010
“Literature is the best way to overcome death. My father, as I said, is an actor. He’s the happiest man on earth when he’s performing, but when the show is over, he’s sad and troubled. I wish he could live in the eternal present, because in the theater everything remains in memories and photographs. Literature, on the other hand, allows you to live in the present and to remain in the pantheon of the future. Literature is a way to say, I was here, this is what I thought, this is what I perceived. This is my signature, this is my name.”
Ilan Stavans, Professor of Spanish, Amherst College
From “The Writer in Exile: an interview with Ilan Stavans” by Saideh Pakravan for the fall 1993 issue of The Literary Review
Amherst gave me five choices. I chose to write about this one.
I am going to write about Chris, but this is immensely difficult. I failed my first few drafts. I try to imagine Ann writing about Lucy.
I wish I could say to him, I missed you. Instead of, I miss you. I will never be able to answer Nick's question if dying is hard.
I have a reason for choosing to do this. In my journal last night I had written, "I want to remember and honor you by writing about you. In language I would like to have you. I would like to keep you."
Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
"You know you're alive. You take huge steps, trying to feel the planet's roundness arc between your feet."
--Annie Dillard's Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
I was watching "The Road" when I thought of these two sentences. Nothing was more alive than the father's language and memory.
Literature remains.
Mushroom Man
"The fact that there are people who say this will never work is proof I'm onto something unique and novel."
--Paul Stamets
Here is a man who believes in mushrooms. He believes they can cure diseases like cancer and tuberculosis, clean up the environment, serve as a potential biofuel, and become an alternative to insecticides.
So don't give up.